


The Weight of Drought

by M J Holyoke (wholeyolk)



Category: The Shape of Water (2017)
Genre: Amazon Rainforest, Creator's Work Skin Applied, Epistolary, Gen, Modern Era, POV Outsider, Post-Canon, Supernatural Elements, Worldbuilding, Yuletide 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-15 06:28:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16928205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wholeyolk/pseuds/M%20J%20Holyoke
Summary: Drought in a rainforest. Imagine that.





	The Weight of Drought

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gamerfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gamerfic/gifts).



**Day 1**  
  
We’ve arrived at base camp. FINALLY. I’m too afraid to count the hours of travel because it’d just upset me even more.  
  
This is the most exhausted, most hot, and most positively disgusting I’ve ever felt in my entire life. You wouldn’t believe the dust. I’m sweating bullets, and it sticks absolutely everywhere and to absolutely everything.  
  
This is not what I thought I was signing up for when I joined NASA. I was going to be an astronaut! Ahahaha. Instead, I became an analyst. I’ve never been to outer space. It’s not even my job to look at the stars. For the past fifteen years, I’ve been sitting in front of a computer at my desk in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California and analyzing satellite lidar data in order to understand the impact of drought upon the Amazon rainforest.  
  
Lots of trees, we thought. Ought to absorb and fix lots of excess atmospheric carbon dioxide, we thought.  
  
We thought wrong.  
  
Since 2005, the Amazon has been losing carbon. Global warming causes drought; drought causes trees to die; dead trees decay and release carbon back into the Earth’s atmosphere, which causes even more global warming . . . and Yours Truly gets a once-in-a-lifetime, fully-funded opportunity with the ad hoc NASA Climate Science Team to see rainforest trees dying up close and personal.  
  
I should be more grateful. There is important research to be done in the field. Not to mention the public outreach and knowledge transfer we’re supposed to be doing. It’s an honor to be a part of it, to make a contribution. It’s just that I miss my sweet, sweet air-conditioning.  
  
Boss woman Cheryl keeps telling me I need to man up. I’d tell her to blow me, except that’d probably constitute workplace sexual harassment.  
  
But yeah. Anyway. I saw the trees dying from space, and sure enough I can see them dying on the ground, too. Some are dead from forest fires. Others are just dead. The biggest and oldest ones are the first to go.  
  
Drought in a rainforest. Imagine that. 

  


**Day 2**  
  
Last night, I saw a green and yellow moth around the solar-powered lanterns, and it was THE SIZE OF A BAT, I SWEAR.  
  
There was a tarantula in my tent this morning.  
  
Then, I nearly stepped on a venomous snake on the way to the latrine.  
  
Only one of these close encounters has made me remotely happy. One guess as to which one. 

  


**Day 8**  
  
One week down, only six more left to go. Fieldwork is HARD WORK. I’m not gonna survive. Kill me, kill me, kill me, kill me, kill me, KILL ME. 

  


**Day 13**  
  
Guess what?  
  
Space isn’t the final frontier. Do you want to explore strange new worlds? To seek out new life and new civilizations? To boldly go where no man has gone before? Well, have I got something to tell you! I’ve made my very first groundbreaking Amazonian discovery:  
  
The final frontier is in my fucking UNDERWEAR. Who knew?  
  
I mean, seriously. No joke. There was something scary growing uncomfortably close to my proverbial little boy parts, and if I’d left this state of affairs for another full day, I guarantee my underwear would’ve sprouted legs and taken off into the jungle . . . and you won’t be surprised to learn that there aren’t any conveniently-located Walmarts in the area to go and buy myself some fresh pairs.  
  
There was nothing for it. I was going to have to do laundry. By hand. In the Amazon River. No, don’t mock me.  
  
These aren’t crystal clear waters, either. The river water is brown and murky, and there are things with big, sharp teeth just waiting to go CHOMP! There’s even a fish that’ll swim up your dick and get stuck there if you’re stupid enough to piss while submerged. It’s true—swear to God. Our local guide warned us about that. My Brazilian Portuguese isn’t the best, but the pantomiming said everything I needed or wanted to know.  
  
One funny thing: I would’ve sworn I saw a woman bathing in the river about fifteen yards out from the shoreline. Dark hair, nice tits. She didn’t look like a native, but when I waved and hollered an “Olá,” her head dropped beneath the surface of the water, and I never saw her again. She just . . . disappeared. It was weird. I don’t think I was imagining it, but who knows? Could be heat stroke.  
  
I should go take a nap now. I’ve got about three hours before the boss is due back to base camp. 

  


**Day 15**  
  
I swear I saw that strange woman in the river again today. I’ve asked around a bit, but it seems like I’m the only who’s seen her. Cheryl did say she saw a big, bioluminescent fish with a face that seemed almost human—she said it was looking right at her while she was collecting data earlier—but I’m pretty sure she’s just messing with me.  
  
The locals believe there are gods which live in the river. The stories are surprisingly specific. There are two of them, supposedly, one male, who has lived since the beginning of time, and one female, younger, a mortal woman he took as his wife. They worship them and leave offerings of flowers. I’ve seen the flowers. They line them up on the riverbank in neat little rows, and there are lots of them. Apparently the gods are angry with us these days, so they need lots of appeasement.  
  
I don’t blame the gods for being angry. We’re really fucking up their forest, aren’t we?  
  
Anyway, I mentioned the woman to our guide, and he warned me about uncontacted tribes. They don’t like outsiders, and I’m not under any circumstances to attempt to approach them. They’ve been known to kill outsiders, given the opportunity, but realistically speaking, WE’RE more likely to kill THEM with our North American strains of rhinovirus. 

  


**Day 19**  
  
Cheryl won’t shut the fuck up about her bioluminescent fish man. She says she got a better look at the weird-ass fish she only glimpsed last week . . . and that it had a body a lot like a man’s . . . and that it was ripped. She thinks it’s curious about us and wants to know what we’re doing.  
  
We think the boss needs to get laid asap; as a matter of fact, the whole team is agreed on this point. 

  


**Day 24**  
  
Got three hours of personal time this morning with the team laptop. Satellite-based internet connection—w00t!  
  
Most of my unread emails turned out to be from my mom. Why yes, I really am that pathetic. Replying to them all wasn’t all that fun.  
  
I did have a good amount of fun, however, taking a deep dive through the National Archive’s online repository of declassified NASA documents. Something interesting: We’re not the first agency researchers to have visited this particular stretch of Amazon rainforest. I found some rather, or should I be writing EXTREMELY, odd reports dating back to the Cold War. It seems like some folks very, veeee~ry high up were very, veeee~ry interested in the native wildlife here. They even brought a live specimen back to a covert facility in Baltimore—bipedal, amphibious, with intelligence comparable to the higher primates, at least. Also, and let’s assume I’m reading in-between the lines of government-speak correctly, it was regarded as highly dangerous. There was at least one confirmed mortality (cause of death not given), a Colonel Richard Strickland, and one missing person, a custodial worker (name not given).  
  
Even so, they were calling this specimen a potential military “Asset.” Any advantage against the Soviets, amirite? What the fuck. Jesus H. Christ, welcome to the bad ol’ days of the good ol’ US of A.  
  
In any case, here’s the first kicker: One early report notes that the “primitive” peoples of the Amazon regarded this “Asset” as a god.  
  
As for the second kicker? Well, the final debriefing states that the “Asset” escaped captivity. They blame Soviet subterfuge, of course, but the bottom line is that we don’t know what really happened to it. Hell, we don’t really know what it was, or if there are more of them still out there. Out here, I mean.  
  
Actually, it kind of sounds like Cheryl’s fish man. I wonder . . .  
  
You know what? I think I need to think. ~~To seek out new life, indeed.~~

  


**Day 30**  
  
Less than three weeks left to go in this heart of darkness. HALLELUJAH. SING YOUR PRAISE TO THE LORD!!  
  
The weird woman in the river never talks, but I’m sure she understands English. I yelled out to her that I thought she was very pretty, and she definitely smiled in response. 

  


**Day 47**  
  
Last night, I had a dream. I dreamed that I was by the river washing my underwear. The sky was cloudless, and the sun was directly overhead. The light was dancing on the water, mirror-bright and rippling, and it was hurting my eyes. I stopped to rub them, which made them hurt worse because I was also rubbing my sweat into my eyes, and they started to water uncontrollably. When I finally did manage to clear my vision, I saw . . . I saw . . . I SAW . . .  
  
You wouldn’t believe how fucking hot it stays in the rainforest after dark. This is the first time I’ve felt chilly. Brrrrrr.  
  
Um, right, where was I? Lost my train of thought for a moment. Oh yeah. I saw the fish man and his mortal wife rise from out of the river. Except, well, the river kind of came trailing along behind them, like a swirl of exhaust from an engine tailpipe, except that it was fresh water, not smoke. They were holding hands. Oh, and they were glowing too. Both of them. They saw me, standing there like a fucking moron with a pair of sopping wet underwear clenched in my fist, but they didn’t say anything. They sort of inclined their heads toward me—polite little bows, maybe?—and then they tilted their heads upwards, and the swirling water around them started to swirl up into the heavens.  
  
The sky darkened rapidly, and there was a flash of lightning, uncomfortably close, followed by a teeth-rattling crash of thunder. I ran like hell for cover. I only just made it before it began to rain.  
  
No, it wasn’t just rain. It positively POURED.  
  
When I chanced a glance back at the river, the fish man and his wife had disappeared. 


End file.
